The ketogenic diet has been popular for several years now, as its hailed for limiting carbohydrates and upping fat intake, mostly in the name of weight loss. If you’re looking to change up your eating habits this year, you may be wondering if the keto diet is right for you-and can it help your run performance? To get to the bottom of the pros and cons of the keto diet for runners, we talked to dietitians to get the full scoop. Here’s what to know before you swap all the carbs for Supraketo all the fats. What is the keto diet? The ketogenic diet (or keto diet) sets very strict guidelines on how to break down your macronutrient (carbohydrate, protein, and fat) intake. Those following keto consume 80 percent of their calories from fat, 15 percent from protein, and 5 percent of calories from carbohydrates-the fuel source your body and brain prefer to tap first as it’s the fastest and most easily accessible.
Staples of the keto diet include fish, meat, eggs, dairy, oils, and green veggies. Even healthy, complex carbs such as whole-wheat pasta, rice, potatoes, and fruit are off-limits. Here’s how the keto diet works: When your body no longer has access to fuel from carbohydrates-either because they’ve been cut from your diet or you haven’t eaten in a long time-it goes into a state called ketosis. That means, your body looks for the next best fuel source: fat. And Supraketo it uses the available fatty acids to produce a compound called ketones, which is why people who are in ketosis and eating more fat will start to burn more fat. The ketogenic diet is not to be confused with a low-carb high-fat diet, which is similar. The difference is the Supraketo Keto Pills diet aims to increase the ketone levels in your blood, causing your body to enter ketosis. What are the benefits of the keto diet?
While our bodies prefer to feed on carbohydrates, ketones can actually fuel the brain and body, says Lizzie Kasparek, R.D., a sports dietitian with the Sanford Sports Science Institute. So it’s not like you’re depleting your body in a dangerous way. "Being in ketosis does not imply reduced muscle glycogen levels. Over time, the keto-adapted athlete may improve his or her ability to burn fat for fuel and still have glycogen available," says Kenneth Ford, Ph.D., director and CEO of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Whether runners, specifically, should put their bodies in a state of ketosis depends on your goals-and the verdict is still out on whether it really helps with performance. Most studies on keto and athletes involve only a small number of participants and most researchers say we need more studies on the topic. For Supraketo Keto example, one small study of five endurance athletes, published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, showed that a 10-week keto diet improved the athletes’ body composition and well-being but not their performance.
In fact, the athletes initially experienced reduced energy levels and an inability to undertake high-intensity bouts of exercise. Another small study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise looked at the effects of the keto diet on exercise efficiency in eight trained athletes. After following the diet, the athletes saw a decline in running speed and power-running speed at VO2max declined by 5 percent. Other research, including a review of seven articles on the subject, says that there’s limited findings on the benefits of keto for endurance athletes and results are mixed when it comes to VO2 max and other performance outcomes. What are the downsides of the keto diet? "There isn’t really a lot of good research that shows those people can perform better, and that’s really what runners care about," Kasparek says. Ford also points out that in the studies looking at ketosis and performance with negative results, the athletes are not often sufficiently fat-adapted (when the body is trained to tap fat stores for energy, which can take several months) or even in ketosis, making it hard to truly gauge whether the diet is effective when it comes to performance.